


Ferelden's Absent Queen

by WardenCommanderCousland



Series: The Absent Queen [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen, Introspection, King Alistair, Minor Alistair/Female Warden, POV First Person, Warden Queen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 04:40:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11706999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WardenCommanderCousland/pseuds/WardenCommanderCousland
Summary: The Hero of Ferelden has had a lot of time to herself, and a lot of reflection as a result. Occurs after the events of Dragon Age: Inquisition. A companion/follow-up to The Masked Antivan





	Ferelden's Absent Queen

Alistair is a light sleeper. Initially, I attributed his wakefulness to the taint, since it made me that way too. A pity. I used to be able to sleep right through militia drills taking place right outside my window. Ser Gilmore used to tease me about it. Now, after nearly ten years of marriage, I realize he’s always been that way, though being a Grey Warden, not to mention king, surely hasn’t helped matters much.

Despite my best efforts to keep from disturbing him, he rouses when I try to slide out of the bed. His voice is still husky, heavy with post-coital exhaustion when he asks where I am going. I reach over to stroke his face where a few rough ends of blonde stubble are starting to poke through his chin. Maker bless him, but my husband has never been able to grow a full beard.

“I need some air,” I say, pulling away the blanket. I sit up and start to climb out of the bed

Alistair wraps his hand around my elbow. “You’re naked.”

“I can fix that.”

“I don’t want you to.” The dim moonlight reflects in his warm brown eyes. “As your king, I order you not to.”

I laugh softly as I shake free of his grasp. “When has that ever worked for you?”

He makes a show of rolling over and turning his back to me. “What good is being king if I can’t order my wife to stay with me?”

There it is. The eternal question of our marriage, the one that has been asked over and over again throughout the last decade, when my responsibilities to the Wardens pulled me away from him. The only time the question wasn’t asked in jest was when I left for Weisshaupt almost two years ago.

I am a Warden before I am Queen. Most days I’d prefer it to be the other way around, but as long as the Blight remains, I’ll seek it out. I’ll die alone, in a blaze of glory in the Deep Roads.

I remember Queen Rowan’s funeral. I was a young girl then, angry with my father for making me plait my hair and sit in the Chantry in a too-itchy dress, listening to a Revered Mother drone on for hours. The Chantry was too crowded and too warm; it was right after Summerday. But I remember the crying – my mother was distraught, Arl Eamon and Lord Teagan, then much younger men, brokenhearted. King Maric, ever stoic, clenching Prince Cailan’s shoulder tightly. It left a mark; he showed it off to Fergus.

Who would come to my funeral? “Maker, we commend your servant Evelyn Moira Cousland Theirin, Commander of the Grey, Ferelden’s Absent Queen, into your loving hands.” Alistair would be there, of course. Fergus, too, but would he bring the children? Would someone tell them who I am? “May Andraste guide her into your eternal embrace.”

I put on the shift of my gown. I purchased it in Val Royeaux right after I left. I didn’t know I’d be gone for so long. The fashion changed.

The door swings open silently and I take a breath of the cold mountain air.

“Lady Oriana Lanos died twelve years ago.” A figure appears out of the night. She is hooded, but wisps of red hair peek out. “She was killed in her bed with her son. Most of her household died in a coup that night.” The figure turns to me and Leliana stares me down. “But you already know that, don’t you?”

I knew traveling under my deceased sister-in-law’s name would eventually catch up to me, but the Queen of Ferelden would command a mighty ransom. Alistair would give away all of Ferelden if it meant getting me back.

Her gaze softens. “Why didn’t you say you were coming?”

I close the door behind me. Alistair needs to sleep. “Nathaniel asked me to retrieve a man awaiting conscription.”

Nathaniel Howe, my lieutenant and Ferelden’s Warden-Constable, is the only soul who knows my exact location at all times. I was chasing a rumor, and it pointed to Skyhold. Thom Ranier is merely a convenient excuse.

Leliana knows how poorly Alistair sleeps and she gestures for me to follow her. I shiver as we walk. The shift is ill-suited to a nighttime stroll in the Frostbacks and my bare feet ache with every step on the frigid stones.

She leads me to Skyhold’s armory. A swordswoman looks up from the forge but doesn’t move. Leliana pulls garments from various shelves. I recognize the scout uniform; I ran across several of Leliana’s agents on my travels. None knew who I was. My Grey Warden armor remained in my pack once the First Warden was done with me.

I change there in the middle of the armory. The swordswoman protests, but modesty is something I did away with in the Blight. There’s no time to fuss over who might see my bosom when a hurlock has just stabbed me in the ribs.

Leliana and I leave the armory and make our way to the tavern. As we walk, I notice a tower’s roof is smoldering. I point it out to her. She sighs. “Dorian gets excited.”

“The Vint?” Leliana looks at me sharply for my colloquialism. I shrug but don’t apologize. I spent too much time in Seheron. “Yes,” she concedes. “The Iron Bull delights in making our resident magister forget himself.”

A qunari and a Tevinter magister. I wonder what Arishok would say.

The tavern is still well-lit but nearly empty. A bleary-eyed soldier raises his tankard as we enter but doesn’t rise. A blonde elf in a torn red shirt and plaid tights darts up the stairs when she sees us, giggling the whole way; she looks familiar but I can’t place her. The dwarf she was sitting with, however, stays.

“Sister Leliana,” she says, rising. “I had some ideas for a—“

Leliana silences her with a raised hand. “Not now, Dagna.”

Dagna? I study the dwarf, who is clearly studying me back. It’s been over ten years, and she’s no longer a child. Recognition floods her face and she hurtles towards me as though launched from a catapault.

“It’s you!” she cries, wrapping her arms around my hips and pressing her face into my stomach. “I always knew I’d see you again! I’ve been wanting to tell you all about the Circle and from there I went to the Free Marches and--”

“Dagna.” Leliana’s voice is sharp, a warning.

The dwarf silences and lets me go, but grabs my hand tightly. “Come visit me! My workshop is in the undercroft! I’ve learned so many things that I have to show you!” She races up the stairs, calling out to someone named Sera. A door slams above us.

I look at Leliana. “She’s…exuberant.”

She nods and we seat ourselves at a table in the corner. The dwarf barkeep doesn’t take orders, just sets two tankards in front of us. The liquid inside has the familiar bitter, hoppy scent of Ferelden ale. It smells like so many things: my father after a hunt, late nights at a campfire, the hall at Vigil’s Keep, Alistair after a long day at court. It smells like home.

“Why did you really come?”

Leliana used to dance around topics with a bard’s grace, but in the last few years she has become sharp, direct. A younger me would have been upset at this change in her friend. But years as the Divine’s Left Hand, reaching out with long knives in the dark, does this to a person. It’s a small wonder she isn’t worse.

“A child alone. Will there ever be another? Cries of a dragon in my dreams. Firing arrows into the dark. Don’t make me eat that. Will they ever find me?” A blonde boy appears suddenly, sitting on the table. Leliana stares him down and he vanishes. She turns to me, bringing her beer to her lips. “You’re still looking for a cure.”

“I’ve heard a rumor.” I look around the tavern. It doesn’t appear that anyone is listening to us. “Of a mage who was cured of the Blight. That she may be here.”

 “I’ve heard a rumor too,” Leliana says. “A most interesting rumor from Highever.”

The mention of my childhood home always sets me on edge. On the nights I don’t wake up from darkspawn-related nightmares, I still see the fires set by Howe’s men, still see my father bleeding out on the larder floor. I visit Fergus every time I’m in Ferelden, but I never stay long.

“I hear how the teryn’s foster looks suspiciously like a Cousland,” Leliana continues. “And there are some who swear that he looks like King Maric did as a child.”

“Imagine that,” I say idly. She knows. And if she knows, how many others know? Maybe we should have sent him somewhere else. But I only trusted Fergus.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks quietly. The cloak-and-dagger mask is gone and I see the Leliana I met so long ago, the slightly-broken, eager rogue who cornered me in a tavern. The one who sat up with me night after night, who visited me at court, the one who couldn’t wait to introduce me to the Divine.

I stare down into my beer, wishing for something stronger. “I didn’t even tell Alistair until I couldn’t hide it anymore.”

It’s the truth. I don’t know when I got pregnant, but I realized it shortly after the Landsmeet. At the time, I attributed my malaise to constantly being on the road, the stress of chasing down both Loghain and the Blight. I never even considered it until Alistair said there would need to be an heir. It was why the wedding was delayed. I hid at Highever until I delivered. My son has been there ever since, first kept by a wetnurse Fergus had hired for Oren, then as a “blind foster” as soon as he was old enough. My son knows we are his parents, but he does not know he is a prince.

Ferelden needs an heir. For now, as far as the Landsmeet is concerned, should Alistair and I perish, Fergus would assume the throne. I saw how many women pursued Alistair earlier in the evening; even with the taint aging him faster than he should, my husband is still a handsome man. I also hear enough women fussing about how unwilling he was to take a mistress, so unlike his father and elder brother.

And why shouldn’t he, really? It’s obvious the queen is barren.

Leliana looks at me expectantly. Her beer is gone.

“He’s not ready,” I say finally.

“Alistair or your son?”

I don’t know. I tell her as much. It wasn’t just my idea to hide our son. Alistair wanted him raised away from Denerim, away from the constant press and fawning of nobility. Away from Anora and her uncertain reach. Away from Morrigan or anyone else who may try to use him for their own purposes.

And because I was afraid. That my baby, who had grown in my Blighted womb, would carry the taint himself. That he would be weak or die young. He’s ten now, and carries no signs of the taint. I had Nathaniel inspect him personally, accompanied by a trustworthy mage recruit.

The dwarven barkeep is at our table again. “Sister, I’m kicking you and your friend out.” The tavern is empty around us, and I see faint streaks of pink in the sky. I still have half of my beer, but it’s flat and warm.

The trouble with being Ferelden’s Absent Queen, apart from the whispers at court and my empty tent, is that I don’t know how to be anyone else. I am the Warden-Commander and Denerim will never be home. As much as I wish it were otherwise, Alistair will only share my bed in passing. My son will grow up knowing my face and little else. My friends, even ones as dear as Leliana, move on without me. They’ll die before I even know they’re in peril. Ohgren’s death was reported in a letter from Nathaniel, Wynne’s a rumor echoed in a Val Royeaux market.

The grass in the courtyard is coated in a silver frost and servants are hurrying about in the gray pre-dawn light. Like so many things now, this scene may as well be echoes of another life, the one I was pulled from so long ago. Or maybe the one I will never have.

And maybe this is the real reason I travel under another name. For truly, who would willingly attempt to take on a Warden-Commander, the Hero of Ferelden? For the love of the Maker, I managed to scare off bandits in Lothering on reputation alone, and I was so green I barely knew my bow from my breastplate. I was a spoiled noble brat whose mabari was for show and had never hunted anything larger or more deadly than a rabbit before Howe’s men came for my family.

But it is easier to pretend to be a dead woman than myself. When I am someone else, I don’t have to be reminded of how I, Evelyn Cousland Theirin, have abandoned everything for my mad goal of delaying the Calling, of curing the Blight. I’ll continue to chase whispers until they drive me to the Deep Roads like so many Wardens before me, praying to the Maker that I die before they can turn me.

Leliana touches my arm and gestures to the open doors of Skyhold’s great hall. “Did I tell you?” She asks conspiratorially. “Morrigan was here.” She knows just how to tempt me with gossip. After all, I am still a spoiled noble brat on the inside.

I follow her into the castle. For now, the darkspawn can wait.


End file.
